


Mindscape

by Sorceress_Supreme



Series: Rebirth/Retribution/Revelation/Revolution. [1]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Mind Diving, Multi, Past Lives, Past Medical Trauma, Past Sexual Abuse, autistic sidestep, forced dysphoria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 11:49:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20656757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorceress_Supreme/pseuds/Sorceress_Supreme
Summary: Julia's stuck in V's mind and whiling trying to find her way out a piece of V's past comes to call.





	Mindscape

**Author's Note:**

> One of my first fics for Fallen Hero: Rebirth! Thanks to everyone in the discord who loved the teasers I posted!

Julia woke up strapped down to a hospital bed. The last thing she could recall was fighting Underworld on top of…no. She was in Mortum’s apartment with V. The channel had changed on tv to a message on an escaped….what had escaped?

She tried to move her arms but they were strapped down to the bed. “Mireda! When I find the pendjo who put me here I am kicking his ass!” She says struggling against the leather straps. The soft insides worn down to nothing.

She blows her bangs out of her eyes and looks over at the tray by her bed. There’s a pen! If she can get it she can get…no the straps aren’t designed like that. She needs to cut them or break the leather somehow.

“Ok. What do you know so far? One? You’re in some kind of hospital. Two? You are strapped to a bed. Three? You hear…crying? Ok then. Four? The straps are old and likely to break if I give one good tug. Probably will mess my wrist up but I’ll be free to find something to wrap it.”

With a plan formed she tested the straps again for which was the weakest. The one on her right wrist seemed to have formed a small tear where it connected to the bed frame.

“Alright then.” She took a deep breath and tugged hard with her right arm, the leather cut into her skin but the part near the frame tore off. With a laugh she laid back on the hard lump that passed itself off as pillow.

She was partially free!

“Now to just undo the rest and get up.” She said to herself as she took the strap off her right wrist and then undid the one on her left before getting up and out of the bed.

Julia stands and looks around. She finds the chart on the footboard of the bed and starts to read it.

“Well that’s not helpful at all.”

She puts it back down by takes the map and “patient journal” with her. Looking around the room for something to wrap up her bleeding wrist. She ends up tears the sheet on the bed and using that.

“Ok now to get out…and…yeah the door’s fucking locked. Fuck. Ok…how to pick a lock? Fuck…if my hair was still long I’d have a whole colony of bobby pins!” Julia says shoving her hands in her short hair with frustration.

It needs to get cut soon but for now? Find a piece of wire or two and start picking. And then? Find the source of the crying and a way out.

_Mortum finished hooking up the last of the monitors in his lab to Julia and V. God when it’d happened…He’d left to get something from the kitchen. Then he heard screaming and something crashed before going silent. _

_ When he rushed back into the living room his girlfriends were just…laying there on the floor. Not moving. They still had pulses but neither responded to his attempts to wake them. _

_ All the while the tv played an alert about an escaped…what had escaped? _

Julia finally had picked the lock and was wandering the ward. She saw a door marked “W.Chen” it was locked with a card reader but if she peeked inside she swore she saw someone on the bed.

“Ok find the card, get in the room and investigate.” She said to herself as she explored. The ward was desolate and covered in old posters, bloodied scratches and what looked like a warning in blood.

_“Harm not the child for it will be your last. The Library is for the dead.”_

Julia suppressed a shiver.

“Well THAT’S helpful.” She said crossing herself like she was a little girl in church again.

The map showed her that if she kept going ahead she should reach the nurse’s station. Maybe there she could find some answers?

Once at the station she saw a shadow dart through a door before it closed. A blanket covered in characters from Winnie the Pooh was on the ground. She picked it up.

“V has this…I’ll take it with me maybe whoever dropped it will be looking for it.”

_ He laid a cold cloth on V’s forehead and one on Julia’s. Whatever happened caused their temperatures to spike to 102 degrees. He checked the monitors. No changes outside of that. Mortum sighs and picks up Julia’s wrist, the act of touching her to check her pulse grounding to him. Still a sleepy and steady pace. He repeats the action with V, same result. _

_ He prays to who or whatever is listening they’ll be ok. He hates that he can’t do more than look over them right now._

Julia looks around the computer at the nurses’ station for something! Ends up playing a game of solitaire that leads to an email with a door code. 3173? Ok write that down for later in the journal.

“Seriously where…huh found some quarters. Is there…” She trails off when she sees that yes there is a vending machine in by the station and…mireda. The fucking KEY CARD IS IN IT?!

“I’m in a fucking video game.”

She gets up and goes over to see how much the card is. Or if there’s anything to eat. Not much really and honestly probably not a good idea to eat god knows how old vending machine food.

But before she can touch the machine the door the shadow vanished through opens.

“Ok…that’s weird…I guess we’re going that way? Or…no. It’s a test isn’t it? Do I charge forward and abandon Chen? Or stay and learn more.”

The crying started again, it tore at her heart but she needed to make a choice. Think for once in her fucking life or go head on with no plan.

The path around her was closing. She’d waited too long. So? She ran forward through the open door.

She was in another hallway but this one was carpeted and had elevators. She followed the sounds of crying to what looked like the library. Opening the door she saw a teenager staring at nothing.

Her hair was long and unkempt. Full of tangles and snarls. Julia walked over cautiously. To her surprise? It was V. She couldn’t be more than 16! She…she was in V’s mind.

_Mortum had left to go check on V’s pets and ended up taking the puppy with him. Hades was now curled up on the bed with his maman. He needed something to distract him. _

_ “Could just do my hair. That was always a way to ease my mind back then. Give me something to focus on other than equations for a while. Just…take a moment for yourself. They won’t be in trouble if you just take a break.” He says to himself getting up and leaving the lab for his living space above it. _

_ He took his time washing himself and his hair before heading back down to the lab in sleep shirt and pj pants. He watched over his lovers as his hands moved by route twisting his hair until it was done and out of the way for the night._

_ “You both have it a little easier. Julia your hair’s just short and shaved in places. V? All you have to do is braid it back for the night. I debate getting rid of it all honestly. Easier to maintain…but then you pout V about how you don’t have anything to hold onto.’ He smiles softly at her sleeping form. _

_ ‘And Julia you’d just say I have it easier cause when you had long hair the only thing that COULD contain it was a braid. I just…please…wake up…both of you. Please.” He choked back the tears. _

“V? Can you hear me? Carina?” Julia says gently kneeling down in front of the teenager who looks at nothing with her eyes glazed and blank.

She knew that look. It was the look she had in photos after she jumped off the old Hollywood sign. Pain killers and who knows what else. She saw the bandages all over V’s arms and legs, crusted with old blood and graying with grime.

“Oh carina…I’m going to find a first aid kit ok? Maybe a brush and a hair tie. Is that alright?” Julia asks praying for a response for any sign that this teenage version of her girlfriend is responsive.

There’s an odd wheezing, V’s head lolls to the side and she looks at Julia. Slowly her hand comes up revealing cracked and blooded nails. Julia takes the hand and holds it gently.

“I promise I’ll come back and help you.” She says placing her other hand on V’s cheek. It’s too warm. She’s alone, sick and high out of her mind on a cocktail of drugs to keep her like this. It makes Julia’s blood boil.

Slowly she gets up and looks for a first aid kit, a hair brush and a hair tie. It takes her a while and breaking into the cafeteria and the kitchen but she finds them and heads back to where V is.

She’s still there. Julia walks over with what she’s gathered.

Once again sitting down in front of V she carefully lays out the first aid kit, hair tie, brush and a bowl of water and a miraculously clean sponge she found.

“V? I’m going to clean your injuries and redress them. Is that ok with you?” Julia asks. She remembers V telling her and Mortum once how she was never asked. She could never say “no” and if she did? She was punished.

V lifts her head, the wheezing sound still there, like her lungs are struggling to get oxygen. She holds a hand up to Julia who takes it and carefully starts to undo the old wrappings.

Julia takes great care cleaning the old blood, grime and god knows what else from V’s injuries. She keeps working until the water is brown and red before applying fresh bandages.

“There that feel a little better?” She asks and V slowly nods. Smiling Julia holds up the brush, “Do you want me to do your hair? It will probably hurt with all the tangles but I’ll do my best so it isn’t too bad.”

V bites down on her lip, the skin cracked and flaking…but turns. Julia sees the tattoos peeking through the ties on the gown. She was a child…and now? No. Don’t think about that.

Slowly Julia brushing V’s hair, taking care to undo what knots she can with her fingers to lessen the pain, once that’s done, she slowly gathers it all into a braid. V’s wheezing breaths cause Julia to worry but she ties the braid off and lets V hold it.

“Better?”

V nods and curls up in Julia’s arms. Her fevered brow on the older woman’s neck, “Carina? I’m going to pick you up to find you a bed ok? Dios mio you’re burning up.” Julia said carefully picking V up and carrying her.

V whined softly as Julia walked. It sounded like crying almost.

Julia shushed her gently, “It’s ok carina. I know it hurts but we’ll find you a soft bed so you can rest.”

Thankfully Julia finds a room with a bed and lays V down gently before covering her up. “I promise I will come back. I just need to find the source of the crying.” V clung to her hand squeezing as hard as she could.

Julia pressed a kiss to her fevered brow like her mother did when she was sick. “I know carina. I know you don’t want to be alone but I need to find the source.”

“M…a…i..a.”

Julia blinks looking at V. “Maia?”

V goes quiet as if saying more would summon who or what this “Maia” is.

_Mortum gently inserts the IV line into the back V’s palm. “That should help keep her fluids up. Vittoria please be ok.” He also had her hooked up to an oxygen tank when her breathing started to sound like she had damage to her lungs. _

_ Julia sleeps with a mask over her eyes as does V to hopefully filter the harsh lights of the lab out. There’s a knock at his door. _

_ “Merde! Wait…who would be here at this hour?” he says checking the security feed. “What the?” _

_ Standing there is….V? But she has chin length hair, a pair of scars on her cheek and vitiligo. He looks over at where his lovers are asleep. He has to protect them. _

Julia finds some missing books from the library and brings them with her. She also finds a mint green pacifier. Is there a baby crawling around here?! Ay dios mio please no!

She found what looked like an OB/GYN’s office and suddenly was hit with V’s memories. She watched as the V she’d been caring for was strapped down, gagged and had her legs forced into the stirrups.

Her blood boiled seeing how much V struggled, saw the people who hurt her. Heard what they said. Rage and static pulsed behind her eyes. But she couldn’t form any lightning. This was a memory in V’s head. No one saved her.

She walked over to the fading memory.

“You find love. You find two people who love you and care for you. Who would never touch you like this unless you asked. Vittoria I promise you find this.”

The memory fades and Julia punches the wall hard enough to make her knuckles bleed. She’s going to make love to her V once this mad adventure is done. Until V is crying from how good she feels and how loved she is.

Eventually she found what looked like a kind of pharmacy and tried to find a fever reducer. What she found was a crying baby toddling around. Her short curly hair a mess along with the rest of her.

Julia walked over to the little baby. “Hi. My name’s Julia.” The baby stopped and looked at her, it was V as a baby now. Little V hiccuped and coughed. The white blanket with pink trim in dirty crumpled mess.

Julia remembered how V said as a toddler and a little kid she would sneeze into her blankie because no one took care of her.

“Is this your blanket?” She asked holding out the Winnie the Pooh blanket which Little V took and hugged it close. Julia held her arms out for Little V to walk into if she wanted.

Little V picked up her other blanket and a teddy bear before going to Julia. Once in her arms the baby coughed and sniffled. Julia held her close.

“I’ve got you sweetheart. I’ve got you.” She said as she rocked Little V in her arms as she searched for medication for the teenager and now the baby.

“Finally the fucking brat stopped crying.”

Julia froze and turned seeing….Heartbreak? And…oh god V’s with her!

Heartbreak sneered in her bloodstained white gown. “Hey Charge. Didn’t know you’d turn into a milf.”

V struggled and coughed trying to get free. “Ah ah. Maia and me don’t want you getting loose you little slut. Fucking the doctors and orderlies all the time?”

Julia marched over and pulled the scared teenager into her arms.

“Puta. You KNOW V was sexually abused. Now tell me who the fuck Maia is and WHY the fuck you are here.”

Heartbreak tugged on her short bangs smirking. “Maia’s V’s little sister. Oh she HATES V. Wants her dead really. Willing to do anything to achieve that. Bit of a brat. I bet you’d love to fuck her just like you did Hollow Ground.”

V looked at Julia her eyes filling with tears.

“I would never hurt V like that. And what happened with Hollow Ground and I happened when we all believed V was dead. We ended it and parted. And you answered only part of the question.” Julia said keeping her voice calm and even.

Heartbreak blinked. “You didn’t know? I’m V. Or at least…one of her? Fuck if I know. I ended up here after I made her throw herself out the window. Made her do it again too.” She sneered looking at V.

V hid herself in Julia’s chest, wheezing as she sobbed. Julia wrapped her free arm around her.

_“Oh Doctor? Are you home? I wanna see my big sister! She needs to be punished! Let me in? Please? I promise I’ll be good.” _

_ Mortum felt sick. V had a sister? His chest ached where he’d been tearing and scratching at his scars. Trying to carve away the breasts that were no longer there. He turned the dampeners on to block her out. But it made V scream in her sleep. _

_ So they were off. And he was spiraling down into a world of pain. Vittoria…Julia…please. _

Little V hugged Julia who stood her ground against Heartbreak. No matter what the insane woman threw at her. She beat it back with the truth.

V watches in awe. An adult? Helping her? She clings to her savior. Lets her youngest self hold her hand.

Heartbreak shrunk back from Julia, she couldn’t win! But then someone woke up. They all looked at the door. And there was Vittoria holding the frame and walking over weakly.

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!”

Vittoria smiles wanly. “I am dead. I am she who is dead and who is not. Go back to your room Ilaria. Before I make you.”

Hea…Ilaria screams and lunges for her.

Suddenly she stops and drops to the ground.

“No! No no no no! Bad! Bad lady!”

Julia looks at Little V whose tiny hands are fists as Ilaria vanishes. “Well that’s new. So…Vittoria? What’s going on?”

Vittoria walks over and helps Julia and V sit and then hugs her girlfriend.

“I think when I collapsed you got stuck in my head. You need to go. Mortum can’t fight Maia. You need to subdue her. Please…amore mia.”

Julia kissed her. “Of course mi amor. Now...you three get to bed and rest.” Julia says giving Little V back her pacifier.

“Binky!” Little V says before sticking it in her mouth.

“I’ll get her bathed first. I…I haven’t taken care of myself. I keep hurting and neglecting what I need.” Vittoria says holding Little V while V rests her head in her oldest self’s lap.

_Julia kisses all three of them on the cheek as her world fades from sight. _

Julia wakes up to the shrill sound of laughter as Maia stabs Mortum in the chest.

“I don’t think so Puta.”

Maia dodges the blast of lightning.

“Aww whatcha gonna do old lady? Spank me?”

Julia rolls her eyes going over to Mortum and helping him up.

“You ok querido?”

Before he can answer Maia screams.

V’s standing over her the younger woman on her knees clutching at her head in pain.

“You want to hurt them Mania? Non Sorella. You will not hurt them.”

“Sestra! You whore! AGGGHHHHHH! Stop it!”

V glares as Julia comes over and places her hands on her shoulders.

“That’s enough V. You said I had to. Remember? You get Mortum and Hades.”

Hades for his part was in Mortum’s lap panting and growling despite the bleeding cuts on his side. He was gonna protect his mommy’s friend!

Maia lunges for Julia who catches her and throws her over her shoulder slamming her into the ground.

“That’s enough. You’re like a kid throwing a tantrum. And that gets you a time out.” She said tapping Maia on the temple and sending a low enough surge of electricity it knocks her out.

V’s trying to patch up Mortum and Hades, her hand bleeding where she ripped out the IV, she’s pretty sure the needle is still in her hand as she works. Julia binds up Maia making sure she’s secured.

“We don’t have anywhere to keep her. Do we?”

V bit her lip.

“We don’t. She’s too dangerous to…” V trailed off seeing the scratches over Mortum’s pecs.

He looked away from her.

“Amore mio? Do…are…I’m sorry.”

Suddenly two pairs of strong arms wrapped around her. “Don’t apologize for what she did. Amour I mean it. You…you…I was so scared.” The tears finally fall from his eyes. Julia shifts so she’s holding them both in her arms.

“Shhh. It’s ok querido. Mi amors it’s ok.”

V held Mortum close so his head rested on her chest as best he could with the six and a half inches off difference in their height. Her body ached and burned but she wasn’t going to let him go.

Hades whined trying to curl up in her lap but failing.

“It’s ok tresoro. It’s ok.”

“He’s a good dog Vittoria. He kept trying to keep you safe and…” V kissed Mortum on the head when he trailed off.

“I know…but you need to rest ok?”

He smiled weakly and sat up pulling her into his arms and letting Hades into her lap.

“We all need to rest, we need to finish tending you your injuries querido and carina? I know you ripped the IV out so the needle is still probably in your hand. Then…mierda…is the A/C off?”

Mortum placed a hand on Julia’s forehead and frowned. “Still feverish. I’m betting you are too ma cherie?” V nodded.

After that they tended to one another’s wounds and made sure Maia was secured one of the lab’s test chambers for now. It took a bit of minor surgery to get the needle out of V’s hand, the whole time she had her face pressed into Julia’s chest.

Once that was done and her hand wrapped the pair of them made sure Mortum was ok. As soon as he was tended too? He and V got Julia into bed putting her in the middle.

_Then they both awoke in a hospital room. _

V was laying in bed with an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth while Vittoria was putting Little V down in bed. She smiled seeing Julia and it grew seeing Mortum with her.

“How?”

“I…I wanted you both here. It’ll be about a day maybe before my telepathy balances out to prevent this from happening. But…I wanted you to see?”

Julia smiled and walked over to Vittoria who looked better than the weakened woman clutching at the doorframe last time she was in her head which really was only an hour or so ago.

Mortum walked over and stopped at V’s bedside, taking in the teenage version of his girlfriend as she rested. “You need to be monitoring her…sorry…I…”

“I know but honestly as I get better so will she. And I don’t really know how to properly set a lot of this up…I had to wing it as sidestep tending my injuries.”

Julia sighed and hugged her before helping her sit on her own bed. “Do you want us to help? Or is there another reason we’re here carina?”

Mortum sat down by Vittoria as well, holding her hand, his thumb brushing again her pulse point.

“I wanted to show you what it looks like in here. Just for now.”

Julia and Mortum smiled and pulled Vittoria down into the softness of the bed holding her close.

“Then let’s rest together. You can show us around later.” Vittoria smiled softly, V’s breathing eased and Little V didn’t cry out in her sleep. Because they all knew they were loved.


End file.
